I have not ran a World of Darkness adventure in many years and picked this one up to introduce a couple of new players to the world setting. I am impressed by the level of detail and depth for a free scenario. With very little tinkering, I was able to customer tailor the adventure for the ongoing camaign I have planned.

This is a fun, disturbing introduction to the World of Darkness for mortals (including fledgling Hunters). There is a lot to play with as a storyteller to set a mood/theme appropriate to your group with some potential encounters that are more gore and others that are more spooky not gross. I used this free story as an introduction for my Hunter players who (along with their characters) have not yet faced the unknown in the new chronicles of darkness setting. It worked really well for that as it is challenging but gives them plenty of room to try out skills and learn the ropes. It played in about 4 solid hours (although I could see some groups taking a bit longer if they were more meandering/explorer types) so it definitely works as a one short or short arc. Definitely has quality despite the price!

This was an easy intro into World of Darkness for a first time story teller. This was a great story that ran smoothly while still having room for the personal touches of the person running it. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants a quick run through World of Darkness or to anyone who wants to see what World of Darkness is all about. Its very user friendly.

Indeed a good product, especially for free, but it needs a bit of work to function, not much but there are a couple of minor plotholes which need to be fixed.
Apart from that the idea behind the story is good, the plot intriguing, and with some fantasy the story can be extended and amplified for even more game sessions.

I Love Drivethru RPG.
I love the Nightmare at Hill Manor. Pertinent synopsis of the rules, pre-generated characters, great plot and story with wonderful play tips. This is going to be a lot of fun to play.
Thanks for sharing your great products. I will definitely purchase and download more fantastic stuff.

I incorporated this SAS into my current campaign. My players had two previous sessions based on a plot of my own making and it had focused heavily on social/investigation aspects, with only a little physical. The plot of this story fit well with the beginnings of our campaign, so I fit it in as an opportunity to practice combat. Adapting it to fit was no problem and it is flexible enough to allow for that kind of thing.
However, there is a LOT of detail missing from this story. The story teller has to fill in a LOT of material, by way of description... of every apartment and each of the residents and the spooky encounters etc. It's not a scenario that you can just pick up and go. The general plot is there. There are some good descriptions of spooky "moments" or tableaus. But the storyteller has a lot of work to do by way of making this place and the various encounters come to life. Unless you are exceptionally good at improv, you need to put in the prep time.
Even with all my prep... incorporating NPCs they'd met elsewhere, picking up threads of their backstories to create character-specific events, etc... my players complained that it was far too combat heavy and didn't have enough storytelling. Now, this may just be a personal preference thing but I have to agree with them. There are a lot of skills that simply never get used or are used in only a cursory way (social and mental). My group didn't like that.
Additionally, I don't know if this was simply a function of my characters not having equivalent stats as the pre-gen characters... but they were completely out-classed by the boss. We were on the verge of a party-wipe when a character rolled a hail mary and was miraculously successful. I used some creative license to make it work, because otherwise they were doomed to fail.
So, overall:

flexible enough to be stand-alone or to be adapted and incorporated into an existing campaign

good plot that makes enough sense that the characters don't see gaping holes in the narrative

the boss-fight might be a little tough for newbies

the whole thing is VERY combat heavy... it felt at times more like a dungeon crawl than a WoD narrative

it is nowhere near ready-to-play. There's quite a lot of planning and prep-work required by the storyteller in order to make it good. Even with prep, requires a lot of improv of descriptions and encounters.
At the end of the day, I would still recommend it. It's a solid storyline for mortal characters, and if your group likes combat they will love this story.

A pretty nice little quickstart that showcases many aspects of a Mortals game. I, a first time Storyteller, found this pretty easy to run for a couple friends, none of whom had played World of Darkness before, and half of whom had never roleplayed before. In turn, my friends found the demo very helpful to learning both the mechanics of the game and the roleplaying aspect, while having a great deal of fun at the same time. It's nothing special in terms of an adventure, but it serves its role perfectly as a one-shot demo meant to introduce the game to new players.

Even if you're not overly interested in the Mortals style of game that this presents, it is well worth getting to become familiar with the rules set for the new World of Darkness. The first thirty pages are dedicated to an overview of the systems, including full write-ups of skills, Virtues and Vices and every rule you'll need to run the module. It also comes with four pre-generated characters. The pre-gens are interesting as a lot of thought went into the backstory for each and there are some very solid emotional triggers for a Storyteller to incorporate into the adventure.

The premise is very simple - a group of mortals investigate something in their apartment building which turns out to be spooky. The author clearly defines the difference between horror and terror from the outset and gives reasons and examples for the use of each. It is a nice touch and the advice here is easily transferable to any other RPG in the genre.

Whilst the actual play of the module can come off as a little dungeon crawl-ish in its execution, the location does lend itself well to the slow transition from the real to the unreal (or familiar to unfamiliar). The story could easily be grasped by a brand new group (I'd argue even those who have never role-played before) and probably would offer a single nights' play. Beyond launching a Hunters game though, I can't see how it could really fit into the mould of chronicle-starter. However, you could tweak the module if you had a particular flavour of nWoD you wanted it to be the catalyst for.

A good introduction to the system, decent characters and a storyline which a first-time ST could fathom after a couple of readings. In all a recipe for a good product.

A Nightmare at Hill Manor transcends what I expect from a Free RPG Day product. I expect a tight little quickstart that features a newly released game the company wants to highlight. I was so excited about the release of Changeling: the Lost, for instance that a bunch of people I knew got an online game going using rules based solely on rules and stats presented in the quickstart which came out a few weeks before the core book.

Hill Manor is something a bit more ballsy. After the short introduction on roleplaying and the World of Darkness setting there is a 28 page boilerplate chapter on the entire World of Darkness core rules setting. Well, not all of it. Since the "adventure" takes place entirely in an apartment complex there are not rules for vehicles and the like. I don't know how they compressed pretty much everything you need from nearly 200 pages of the core rulebook down to 28 but it seemed pretty solid even covering Virtues and Vices, Derangements and an appendix at the end on ghosts. My first new World of Darkness was a free promo download of the core rules which they offered here one October, so while not new it is impressive. If you're hoping to save money by downloading for free or $5 for the paperback not everything is there but enough for the casual player.

I am also very glad that they highlighted the "Blue Book" line of mortals in the WoD so prominently. Nothing is here that is not in the main rulebook. It's a straight-up ghost story free of vampires and the like. There is one template-level character as a non-player character but since players only deal with his ghost it remains a mortals-only game.

Another aspect that improves upon my Changeling quickstart is that the story is presenting in White Wolf's Storyteller Adventure Series (SAS) format with scenes nicely plotted out with non-linear gameplay figured in. The story itself is solid. It's hard to break free from the pack when it comes to haunted house stories but the author presents a number of suggestions for suspenseful gameplay and ways to amp up the fear and terror. Fear and terror are hard to pull off in a game and ghost stories are timeless so it is hard to make them unique and gripping but a good Storyteller should be able to pull it off. Many of the suggestions I saw expanded upon in Glimpses of the Unknown (released later the same year) so that purchase may also be worth your time.

The pre-generated characters were all interesting as well as the allied NPCs. The antagonists were a little one dimensional but which ravening ghosts aren't? You can always improve upon the backstory if you think you can come up with something better. I can see where some players might feel a bit railroaded by the plot as you cannot leave the haunted manor after the start of gameplay but that's a common enough trope in ghost stories of this type. Isolation is a core element.

I would still buy the Core Rulebook if you like what you see here, but for a free download or $4.99 softcover this product really packs a lot of material and is good advertising for White Wolf's brand as a whole.

I think this is a great intro to World of Darkness for mortals. It has a great horror factor to it featuring an interesting take on the haunted house genre. The characters are trapped in some nightmarish hellscape where ghosts of those who met a tragic end are looking to get revenge on the living. Several optional scenes are included so you can keep players on their toes while they explore.

As they move through the apartment building, they put the pieces together and have to work together to escape. The pregens look good and using them should provide a relatively balanced game. All the necessary rules are briefed here and none of the expanded material is included. This should give your players a taste of NWOD while easing them (and you as a Storyteller if you haven't before) into the system.

Sure, it doesn't get into all the supernatural options for players or adversaries, nor does it touch much on the intricacies of being a Hunter really. It's just normal people in an extraordinary situation. I may even try to adapt this to Fear Itself as it could just as easily be used there. Ok, I'm lazy and everything is laid out and organized here, so I'll go with NWOD.

Just to note, the only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is I feel it is a bit heavy-handed at the end when the full explanation is revealed. I usually prefer clues to slowly add up to the big picture rather than one critical piece of information the explains everything.